Cowlishaw: Muhammad Ali was Babe Ruth-like 'larger than life'

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It is as impossible to convey, in this century, the importance a white kid from the suburbs could attach to the life and true heroics of a heavyweight boxing champion as it is for me to say I truly understand what Muhammad Ali meant to black people all over the world in the last century.

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That he has now died at the age of 74 seems equally impossible, given that the tortured images of him, suffering from the life that he chose and the manner in which he absorbed endless punches to wear down opponents, lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta 20 years ago suggested a man who could not possibly have been in his mid-50's.

Ali is gone. No one since Babe Ruth has ever fit the "larger than life" tag more than the man who first captured the heavyweight title in 1964 as Cassius Clay. And Ruth towered over the sports world void of social significance.

The fight with the seemingly invincible Sonny Liston was not televised in this country other than in theaters on what we called "closed circuit" TV which, again, must sound like something from another world to people under 40. So the Cowlishaw family, just moved to Richardson, Texas, from New Jersey, huddled around the living room radio and cheered (at least I did) as Clay stunned the mighty Liston.

In the ensuing years, Ali would be hated as much or more than the decidedly thuggish Liston for his allegiance to the Black Muslims, a group that would ultimately use him for their own profit more than they ever benefited him. His defiant stance towards the draft and refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army in a ceremony in Houston both robbed Ali of his championship and his ability to box for three years and elevated him beyond his or anyone's dreams as a man of principle.

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It was disappointing to learn, in later years, from reading those who knew him and the situation best, that Ali's anti-war stance probably stemmed from a fear of the Muslims and their reprisal if he were to join the Army and accept the ceremonial position befitting his celebrity (he never would have been sent to Vietnam).

But that was Ali outside the ring, which never was as important to me as Ali in the ring. I realize that's, to put it mildly, a minority opinion, but as years passed and he drifted into retirement and then nearly disappeared from public view due to the Parkinson's, Ali the legend and Ali the activist grew while Ali the great boxer became diminished.

There's no question that Ali's antics as a showman have been copied across sports by others -- some great and some not so much -- for 50 years. Ali taught us how to sell a sport and an event, and while there had been black boxing champions long before him, Ali made himself the ultimate champion of his race. His face was recognizable around the world decades before the Internet made such a thing possible for far less accomplished champions, heads of state or people famous just for being famous.

But Ali the boxer deserves a final mention here. After felling Liston, he eventually found his way onto network TV only a few times -- usually a Saturday afternoon "Wide World of Sports" bout possibly brought to us all the way from Europe, as improbable as that seemed back then.

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It was when he returned to boxing in 1970 after his forced hiatus that my fandom grew and I was able to see him three or four times on closed circuit TV, usually with my father. I can't imagine that any sporting event the rest of my life will match the hype that surrounded March 8, 1971.

Ali vs. Frazier. We didn't know there would be three of these. We didn't know how this trilogy would come to be viewed and dissected, how both men would be bruised and battered almost beyond recognition at the end of the third and final bout in Manila.

While I joined the vast majority in cheering for Ali, I was devastated as a teenager when Joe Frazier sent him to the canvas in that first fight, rendering the great Ali not only beatable but mortal. How big was this fight?

Frank Sinatra was a ringside photographer. Burt Lancaster provided the color analysis to Don Dunphy's call on the closed circuit telecast. Madison Square Garden will never host an event of greater magnitude.

But while cheering Ali's every utterance -- often in contentious interviews with Howard Cosell -- I didn't realize the unfairness with which he diminished Frazier, how he made a man who had endured a much more brutal childhood than Ali's relatively benign upbringing in Louisville come to be viewed as an "Uncle Tom" within his race and in his own city of Philadelphia, solely because Frazier wasn't as educated or articulate.

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That's why Frazier fired back outside the ring with such venom. In Mark Kram's brilliant "Ghosts of Manila, Frazier says: He's no martyr. The heroes are them kids with pieces of their body all over Vietnam, a lot of poor blacks. I don't care about his draft thing, his politics, his religion. He ain't no leader of anything.''

Undoubtedly, there were plenty (and still are) who would agree with Frazier. But it was often said back then, after Ali reclaimed the championship by beating George Foreman, then conquering Frazier in one, final exhaustive bout, that the heavyweight class would die with Ali.

And, with all due respect to Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson and today's assembly of Klitschkos and others, it essentially did.

Now Ali is gone and, like so many other legends of their times, he didn't necessarily live the life that he sold to the public. But as a young man, he boxed like no heavyweight ever had, best described by David Remnick in "King of the World."

His greatest defense was his quickness, his uncanny ability to gauge an opponent's punch and lean just far enough away from it to avoid getting hit -- and then strike back. Clay had remarkable eyes. They seemed never to close, never to blink, never to tip off an opponent. They were eyes that took everything in. And the instant his eyes registered an opening, an opportunity for mayhem, his hands reacted in kind.

That was inside the ring. Ali fought his own fights against the establishment and the white media that initially despised him away from the ring. And the combination of those lightning-quick skills and fearless defiance gave rise to his larger-than-life status that again is better told by Remnick.

"All the best heavyweights during Ali's time and after -- Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield -- have languished in his shadow. They have all been good fighters, even excellent ones, but they could never hope to achieve Ali's resonance, his brilliance. "I came to love Ali,'' Patterson told me. "I came to see that I was a fighter and he was history.''